


i.o.u.

by aetherae



Category: Tales of Vesperia
Genre: Gen, WHY DID THIS NOT GET THE ATTENTION IN CANON IT DESERVED, forever salty at how tales likes to brush over betrayals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-10
Updated: 2016-12-10
Packaged: 2018-09-07 17:22:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8809459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aetherae/pseuds/aetherae
Summary: Schwann acts for results. It’s Raven who faces the consequences.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> so once upon a time i beat vesperia and loved it but also thought to myself "so why the fuck do we just go over raven betraying estelle so easily huh." CUE THIS FIC.

Estelle’s out at the edge of Myorzo, the pale green filament of Krones’s body the only backdrop. There’s something about it that makes her look sickly—the shock of her petal-pink hair too unnatural, the green of Myorzo making her white dress dirty and dingy. Even from this distance, he can tell that her shoulders are shaking.

A lifetime ago, Raven remembers someone else with pink hair. A little girl, embarrassed and mortified at tripping over and dropping her stack of books on a knight. She ran to the edge of the castle garden, and when she was found, her shoulders shook silently, hands pressed to her eyes to stop the tears.

He thinks her hands must be pressed to her eyes now, too.

He makes his way over purposefully sloppy, kicking up rocks and whistling a tune he doesn’t know the name of. He shoves his hands into his pockets, both curled into fists and one balled around a torn up note. Estelle’s hastily trying to compose herself when he calls, “Hey, princess!”

She turns around so easily, so normally, like she hadn’t just heard the worst news of her life. Like things weren’t about to get worse. There’s one last sniffle before she tremulously works up a smile, just to greet him. Her eyes are rimmed red, and her hands are shaking where she’s clasped them in front of her, but still she says, “What is it, Raven?”

It makes the pit of his stomach drop.

She doesn’t even have time to be surprised when he slugs her right in the gut.

Estelle slumps over easily, and he hoists her over his shoulder with just as much ease as he crosses the short distance to the platform out of Myorzo. The crumpled note falls out of his hand and onto the ground.

_It’s time to collect._

He wants to spit on it.

But dead men pay their dues, and Schwann has been dead for a long, long time.


	2. Chapter 2

Raven comes to hate the daytime.

Schwann can’t afford to care.

The first day he sees Estelle in Alexei’s apatheia system, he almost hopes the princess is too exhausted to recognize him. It’s a futile hope, and the moment he follows Alexei into the testing room, Estelle practically flinches upon hearing them enter, her head reluctantly lifting up to look at her tormentor—as well as the person who delivered her to this brutal torture.

“Raven?” she asks, voice throaty and raw. He doesn’t have to wonder how long she screamed herself hoarse, not when the entire building shook with her agony.

“I’m afraid you’re mistaken, princess,” he replies in smooth monotone, because he isn’t Raven. The only person wearing this orange uniform and standing behind the commandant is Schwann Oltorain, a stoic knight captain. The perfect subordinate. “My name is Schwann.”

It’s not the first time she asks who he is, but it’s the only time she does with recognition clear in her eyes. Alexei has him oversee the experiments and adjustments on the system for the next while, citing “more important matters” that draw his attention. Schwann accepts with a solemn nod, but Raven thinks it’s because the commandant’s just sick.

There couldn’t be any other explanation, to subject him to watch Estelle be torn apart from the inside out.

“ _Please_ ,” she sobs, begs, hands nearly clawing at her eyes. There are no more tears to wipe though. She’s just about cried herself dry. “Please, Raven, please. _Help me_.”

Schwann sighs lightly, as if his patience is being tested. (Raven screams, hating himself for having ever been brought back to life.) “As I’ve said before, my name is Schwann.”

It would be easier if she hated him. There are times where looks up to her and sees fear in her eyes, and he knows that she’s afraid of him and every single person who enters the room. It feels like being slugged in the gut, knowing she’s scared of him, but he deserves nothing less. He comes to hope that her fear turns to anger, that she condemns him for putting her into this situation.

But again, it’s a futile hope. The day before they leave for the Shrine of Baction, he looks at her, and she looks at him, and he sees nothing in her eyes.

Schwann watches her and considers. The mechanical pulse of aer beats through his veins as normally as ever, even as Estelle’s limbs hang limp by her side, more broken doll than human. No, his heart does not break.

_He_ breaks.


	3. Chapter 3

He stands guard outside her door.

It’s pretty rich, coming from him. The others are catching up on well-deserved sleep, otherwise he’s not sure they’d let him do this. _He’s_ not sure he should be doing this, not when he’s the one who landed the princess in this hot mess in the first place, but here he is. Sitting right outside the door to Estelle’s room, the other side of the door guarded by Flynn. Honestly, the boy might be guarding against him, too.

The newly crowned commandant stands straight as a rod, expression as grave and serious as it ought to be, given the circumstances. A model knight, through and through. When he addresses him, Raven’s not sure if Flynn’s frowning because of who he’s talking to or because of his poor posture.

He asks him what Captain Schwann is doing here.

“Schwann? That guy’s dead,” he tells him. “This old man here just wants to make amends.”

An impossible task, he knows, but he’s living a new life now, permanently borrowed by Brave Vesperia. The old Raven (the dead Schwann) might’ve hightailed it, but he figures that it’s time to try something new.

It’s not until Estelle wakes up that the impossibility of the task hits him.

He’s not nodding off, that much is for sure, but he wouldn’t deny zoning out. An ear-splitting scream snaps him back to attention, and Flynn bursts into the room, sword at the ready with other knights already following him with their guards up. Raven’s just about to follow suit until he sees her—Estelle, thrashing and screaming in what should be the comfort of her own bed, not knowing where she is or how she got there. She must think she’s been kidnapped again.

Raven doesn’t say a word and starts walking.

He doesn’t stop until his feet have led him to the castle jail, until they’ve planted him right inside a cell and in front of a cot. When he lies down, he closes his eyes and pretends he’s asleep. (He almost pretends he’s dead.)

Even this much is too good for him.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> mfw i rewatched a few parts of the game for this last part and realize just how much contradicts what’s said to have happened, but y’know what? the game goes over this shit WAY too easily, and i like my take on things better.

When Raven hears footsteps approaching, he’s not surprised. He almost considers continuing to feign sleep until he hears just who it is.

“I heard everyone got to punch you once before they took you back in. Is that true?”

His eyes snap open, and he sits up in less than a second. Estelle stands before him, alive and awake but eyes heavy with exhaustion and face almost dangerously passive. It reminds him too much of her apatheia-induced prison.

“Yeah,” he finally says, wondering who she found out from. Rita or Yuri seem the most likely, but no matter who she heard it from first, he can’t imagine them letting her go down to see him so easily. Maybe she didn’t tell them. “It’s true.”

“Then it’s only fair I get a punch in too, right?”

He laughs, short and joyless. “That and a lot more, if ya want, but yeah. That’s right.”

Estelle’s right hand balls into a fist, tightening so much he can hear the fabric of her glove strain, and then she _slugs_ him right in the face, so hard he’s sent flying back from his seat on the bed into the stone wall behind him. Distantly, he thinks she might’ve broken his nose. When he blinks his vision clear and sees blood dripping onto his shirt from his nose, he’s not surprised.

What surprises him is the familiar warm rush of healing artes, the ground glowing just beneath Estelle’s feet. She keeps her focus on the healing arte, hands hovering just over his face but eyes locked onto the wound rather than his own gaze.

He doesn’t blame her.

“I’m not sorry,” she states, drawing her hands back. Raising his hand to just beneath his nose, the only trace of the injury is drying blood. Her healing is perfect, as always. He doesn’t deserve it.

“I don’t expect ya ta be sorry.” He could almost laugh at the very thought. “Hell, I don’t _want_ you to be sorry.”

She stands silently in response, eyes hard and piercing and looking straight into him now. His blastia heart beats mechanically, and with every thud in his chest, the silence only hangs heavier. In the end, he breaks eye contact first.

“You sure you should’ve done that? Seems like it could be dangerous,” he eventually settles for. There’s too much to say with no good way to say it, and he reaches for the obvious instead. While he didn’t know the fine details of Alexei’s system (chose not to learn because feigned ignorance was always easier), the aftermath at the top of the Sword Stair paints a clear enough picture.

Her gaze hardens even further, and despite how tightly she has her hands balled into fists at her side, he can see the visible shake in them.

“How and when I use my power is my choice. Whatever I _do_ now is my choice, and my choice alone,” she says, quiet but firm. He looks back up at her, and her gaze hasn’t moved an inch. “What about you?”

He blinks. “What about me?”

“What are you going to do now?”

Raven thinks of what he said before, of how he wants to _make amends_ , but the words never make it past his throat. The very idea that he thought he could take on such an impossible task seems absolutely ludicrous now, laughable. He wants to make amends, give what he owes and pay for what’s due, but this isn’t a debt he could ever hope to make up for.

“What would you have me do?”

His life might be permanently on loan to Brave Vesperia, but as far as he’s concerned, what he owes Estelle far outweighs anything and everything he owes to the guild. They’re not the ones he kidnapped and delivered to a madman. From the way she blinks at him, she must not agree.

“They said your life belongs to Brave Vesperia now. You can’t offer me that when it’s not yours to give.”

“Then I’m giving you Schwann’s,” he all but declares, and this time when he looks into her eyes, he doesn’t even think about looking away. “That poor bastard should’ve paid you back with at least that much, so I’m doing it in his place.”

Her hands finally unclench, and as she lets out a breath, he sees her shoulders sag where she stands. Silently, she takes a seat next to him on the prison cot.

“You can’t just say it was Schwann’s fault,” she says quietly, the simmering anger in her voice having drained but the firmness still remaining. All that’s left is the hurt.

“I know,” he says just as quietly. “I know.”

They’re quiet then, no noise save for Estelle’s even breathing, in and out, smooth yet loud enough to make him realize that it’s probably a forced calm. He doesn’t know what she wants from him, but the longer they sit in silence, the more he feels his guilt ready to eat him from the inside out, and if someone could die from sheer guilt and shame, this is probably the way it would happen.

Thinking about it, maybe this _is_ what she wants.

“Tell me why you did it then. Not Schwann, but you.” He hears her ball the fabric of her skirt in her hands, and he wonders if this is all there’ll ever be for them now. Estelle, preparing herself like she’s facing a battle every time she so much as speaks to him, and him, miserable and guilty every time he so much as sees her. “Why, Raven?”

What he’s done isn’t something he could ever truly make amends for, but if this is how he starts, then he’ll take it.

His lips twitch upwards, all irony and no joy, when he taps against his chest. Even through his clothing, the clink of his blastia heart is all too loud in the quiet. “Whatever I did—anything I did, _everything_ I did—was never my choice. I’ve never thought much about living, but dying? Even less.”

It’s not an excuse. There is no excuse, and he knows it, but it’s what he did and why he did it, nothing more and nothing less. Death was enough the first time around.

Estelle stands up, and when he looks at her, she’s still not the soft, smiling princess he’s come to know. He’s not sure if he’ll _ever_ see that Estelle again, at least not when he’s around. But her hands are relaxed at her sides, her gaze less brittle in its directness. This doesn’t fix anything, and this won’t be done for a long while, maybe not ever, but it’s something of a beginning, and that’s enough for him right now.

“I still don’t forgive you. Not yet.”

“And if you never do,” he says, and this time when he smiles, it’s real, “that’s fine. You won’t hear me complaining.”

To his surprise, that somehow manages to get a smile from her. It’s small and nowhere near as bright as he’s used to, but it’s a smile all the same. He feels like something heavy in his chest is dislodged, and for the first time since Myorzo, he breathes easily.

That changes when suddenly Estelle throws her arms around him, her arms looping behind his neck to pull him into a hug. A noise of surprise makes it past his lips, and the tighter she holds him, the less he knows what he’s supposed to do.

Embracing him with all the strength she has, almost to the point of pain, she mumbles into his shoulder, “Thank you for coming for me.”

Gingerly, he lifts his arms as well, and when she doesn’t go bolting, he places his hands on her back, patting and soothing.

“Anytime, princess. Anytime.”

That’s a promise.


End file.
